{"id":51544,"date":"2020-10-05T06:00:08","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T10:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=51544"},"modified":"2020-10-02T15:49:31","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T19:49:31","slug":"in-the-communist-bible-translation-jesus-stones-the-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2020\/10\/in-the-communist-bible-translation-jesus-stones-the-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Communist Bible Translation, Jesus Stones the Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are two strategies for a totalitarian government to eliminate Christianity.\u00a0 One is to eradicate Christians by persecution.\u00a0 The other is to co-opt Christianity, changing its teachings so that they conform to the totalitarian ideology.<\/p>\n

Historically, neither of these approaches have worked to extinguish the Christian faith.\u00a0 But China is pursuing both tracks.<\/p>\n

Lately, the Chinese Communists have launched a plan to \u201csinicize\u201d Christianity\u2013that is, to make it more Chinese\u2013and to make it conform to socialist principles.\u00a0 The plan includes making a new translation of the Bible.<\/p>\n

So far, carrying out this plan in the state-sanctioned churches has meant replacing posters of the Ten Commandments with posters of the Principles of Socialism\u00a0 and replacing crosses and pictures of Jesus with portraits of Communist Party chairman Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n

\n

As reported by Cameron Hilditch in his article\u00a0China\u2019s Communist Christ,<\/a>\u00a0the new Bible has not yet been released, but part of it has been published in a high-school text book on ethics and law.\u00a0 The passage is John 8:1-11,<\/a> the account of the woman taken in adultery.\u00a0 \u00a0You know the story, in which Jesus shames the crowd that was ready to stone her in accord with the Law, by saying, \u201cHe who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.\u201d Whereupon one-by-one, her would-be executioners walk away.<\/p>\n

But the new translation replaces the next part, in which Jesus says\u00a0\u201cNeither do I condemn you; go, and from now on\u00a0sin no more.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Instead, the revised standard Communist version says this:<\/p>\n

When the crowd disappeared, Jesus stoned the sinner to death saying, \u201cI too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let that sink in for awhile.\u00a0 This is not translation, not contextualization, not adapting the text to make it more understandable to a culture.\u00a0 It is making the text say the exact opposite<\/em> of its actual meaning.\u00a0 Instead of forgiving the woman, Jesus kills her<\/em>!\u00a0 And instead of indicting the sinners who are presuming to punish another sinner, the Communist version says that sinners are supposed to<\/em>\u00a0punish sinners.\u00a0 On top of that, the Communist version erases the deity of Christ and the possibility of His being our sinless substitute who can atone for our sins by making Him say, \u201cI too am a sinner.\u201d\u00a0 And all of this presented as being from the Bible, a counterfeit that claims the authority of God\u2019s Word!<\/p>\n

As Hilditch discusses<\/a>, Chinese Communism can allow for no one to think about breaking its laws.\u00a0 And it can allow for no transcendent God, which would mean that there is an authority greater than that of the state.<\/p>\n

Not that China\u2019s underground church, which is growing like wildfire, is likely to be fooled.\u00a0 See these posts by Chinese Christian and fellow Patheos blogger Jackson Wu [not his real name]:\u00a0China\u2019s Five-Year Plan for Adapting Christianity to Chinese Socialism<\/a>\u00a0and \u201cSinicized Christianity\u201d Is Not Christianity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
Illustration:\u00a0 Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery by Alessandro Turchi (1578-1649) \/ CC BY-SA (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/)(1578-1649) via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the new Chinese Communist translation of the Bible, Jesus kills the woman taken in adultery, rather than forgiving her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":51578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10,11,19],"tags":[10103,431,10097,1161,10094,10100],"class_list":["post-51544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-christ","category-church","category-government","tag-chinese-christianity","tag-chinese-communism","tag-communist-bible-translation","tag-jesus-christ","tag-persecution-of-christians","tag-woman-taken-in-adultery"],"yoast_head":"\nIn the Communist Bible Translation, Jesus Stones the Woman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the new Chinese Communist translation of the Bible, Jesus kills the woman taken in adultery, rather than forgiving her.\" \/>\n<meta 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